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Jon Bartos People focused on performance hitting their potential. That has been Jon’s life work. As many have introduced him, Jon is the quintessential thought leader, trainer, speaker and consultant on all aspects of Human Capital, Talent Management and Sales Performance Management. After a 17-year career in the Supply Chain Technology – Auto ID industry, Jon realized the strong demand for talent and for companies who could deliver high performing talent. He then purchased a Management Recruiters International franchise in November of 1998 and away he went. As President and CEO of his new firm, MRI/Jonathan Scott International in Ohio, Jon achieved industry-leading success as one of an elite group of executive recruiters who billed over $1 million annually while building a multi-million dollar top 10 Office. In a 10year period (1999–2009), he cashed in over $10 million in personal production and established JSI as a top 10% executive search and staffing firm winning 17 international awards in the MRINetwork. Today Jon is also still on a desk. As of today, he has billed over 17 million in personal production since 1999. Jon sold the business in 2012 to a large healthcare consulting firm. In 2015 – he started a new firm, focus on Retained Search - Global Performance Search. Today, GPS has offices in Toronto, Ohio, Kentucky, Colorado and Medellin, Columbia. GPS is a leader in talent solutions for Software Firms, Implementation Partners and end users in the HCM/HRIS Markets in North America and Europe. In 2008 Jon founded Revenue Performance Management, LLC the leading Analytics tool that is changing sales organizations overnight. The RPM Dashboard is a Sales Analytics and Developmental tool that focuses on taking sales professionals on a path to achieving their Sales Performance Potential. Period. Currently the RPM Dashboard is used by over 500 companies worldwide. www.rpm-usa.com. Through jonathanbartos.com which was founded in 2011, Jon has personally coached over 500 business owners and executive leadership to help them achieve their vision. Jon has been rated as the top speaker at many industry events and has had an opportunity to speak with audiences all over the world including South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, Bulgaria, Australia, Greece, France, UK and North America. His three block buster seminars “Contingent to Retained (Mutually Committed)” to the Executive Search Industry, “Hiring High Performing Teams” and “Passion for Performance” to the C Level and Sales VPs are offered at various locations world wide and online. In the last 10 years Jon has published over 100 articles, 10 white papers and 3 books on the above topics. Jon’s events and seminars are held at major cities all around the world and at the Red Gate Farm and Vineyard in Quincy, KY or Pagosa Springs, Co. For fun, Jon is an avid outdoorsman, Grape Farmer, Musician, Songwriter and still competes Nationally in Masters Track and Field in the Pole Vault event where he has been 4 times Nationally Champion since 2004. When not traveling, Jon resides at his home and Office at the Red Gate Farm and Vineyard in Quincy, KY or his Ranch/Office in Pagosa Springs, CO. Jon can be reached at 513-515-1267 or jon@jonathansbartos.com.

EP21 Jeffrey Freedman - Sales Leadership Principles Jeffrey D. Freedman Country Manager Proofpoint Canada Jeffrey Freedman brings over 20 years of leadership expertise in sales, channels, marketing, and customer knowledge to his current position as Country Manager, Proofpoint Canada. Mr. Freedman has executive responsibility for developing, supporting and executing the sales strategy in businesses across Canada. In this capacity, Mr. Freedman devotes his expertise and efforts to lead Proofpoint in delivering award cyber security solutions to clients. Prior to joining Proofpoint, he had a 22 year career at IBM. Jeffrey has worked in a variety of business units at IBM. He was the VP of Systems and Systems and Technology Group. In addition, he contributes his time generously to the United Way and Sporting Life 10K fundraiser.

Aim As High As You Can featuring Eliane Guindon Éliane has more than 20 years of experience within the Information technology sector in companies such as HP and IBM. Prior to joining SAP, she worked as a Client Executive at SAS Canada, focusing on Federal Government accounts as well as partners such as KPMG, Deloitte, and E & Y. She is a goal oriented professional with experience in both the private and public sector. Over the years, she has developed strong sales and account management skills which led her to achieve excellent results. Éliane started her career as an Account Manager at Purolator in Montréal after graduating. In her spare time, Éliane practices hot yoga several times a week. She is a mother of two girls that keeps her very busy. She has a passion for good red wine and fine food.

EP22 Rod Weir - Characteristics of a Successful Sales Practitioner Rod joined Easy Projects almost 3 years ago bringing more that two decades of experience in all things sales: sales leadership, business development, partner/reseller management, go-to-market design and execution, etc. After a number of years in Account Executive/Director roles in large tech and telecommunications companies, he moved on to pursue sales in either true start ups (including help raise $5M USD from a VC) or in smaller but established software companies. He helped two of the companies where he worked to be acquired. In his first year at Easy Projects, he changed many of the key components of a successful sales team (people, process, price, tools, focus on Customer Success, sales collateral) and achieved a 42% annual revenue growth. The next year sales grew 24%, and we're well in to this year's achievement. "Call it whatever you want; soft skill, interpretive skill, listening skill, call it whatever you want, but this process -this is just a mini example of what I believe is a fundamental key skill and characteristic of someone who's really good at sales. Not someone who can do it, someone who's really good at it. They will become a master of getting what I call discovery facts - information, opinions out of a prospect and using them effectively throughout the sales cycle, until they buy."

Jon Levesque - Video Branding on LinkedIn for Canadian Sales Jon Levesque started his sales career with his first company that he started in college @ Seneca with my friend Shabby. It was a music entertainment company and he was selling our college/university campus hip hop tours across the country. He was also selling our artists album to Sunshine Records and HMV stores across Canada back when CD’s mattered.  He got fired from Future Steel Buildings in Markham, went to a 3rd party collection agency for a year then got into my first tech sales job at Softchoice in Liberty Village.  He got into sales Leadership at SHI International  He later entered Software vendor sales at BMC Software and now he’s in his dream job at Datadog. "I saw 'A' an opportunity to do something very unique and in terms of branding and building a brand in Canada from literally the ground-up, it's exciting...... and how do you get your name out there? I think that I wanted to be able to use multiple vehicles and I felt like LinkedIn was probably the best platform to reach as many people, I'll call my target audience, as humanly possible."

EP15 Mike Coyle - Three Pilars to Any Business Mike Coyle, 47 year old Sales and Marketing professional. Currently VP Sales Americas for Powertraveller - manufacturer of portable power and solar products. Most of those that know Mike see him as a strong leader who blends the power of being honest with a healthy dose of empathy. He places enormous emphasis on being straight forward often at the detriment of political correctness. “Strong leadership comes from being able to be honest with people to help them get out of their own way and focus on the task at hand”, are words you will often hear from Mike. Combine those leadership skills with his ability to plan strategically and implement tactically, you end up with a new breed of sales and marketing tactician required in todays fast changing business environment. His most recent success came with a multi million deal landed with one of his current employers largest customers. “we had kind of fallen off the map with these guys and after several meetings the decision came down to one person. A Japanese gentleman, who rarely spoke. He held all of the cards and as he listened to me speak for a 20 minute presentation, he said nothing. At the end I asked for the business, he paused for an agonizing 2 minutes. After lots of pondering and almost comical facial expressions, he agreed. That was the longest 2 minutes of my life.” Mike is currently facing his latest challenge building a new business segment for the company he works for, applying the strategies he has learned over the years. He is a major asset for the company he works for today. He treats the business as if it were his own and uses his own set of values and principles to guide him.

EP19 Chaith Kommamuri - Being a Business Partner in Sales In a nutshell, building businesses for the business you serve. Strategic Hat with tactical sneakers ! 20 + years with experience across transformational projects involving Services, Software and Infrastructure with the single focus of delivering business value. Worked across continents, Asia + NA across world class organizations like Canon, Oracle, Siemens -now atos , Fujitsu etc. MBA from Schulich school of business, part of the Alumni committee. Presently with Bell -Createch , an SAP partner helping automate organizations key processes and embark on true digital transformation + engage my parent Bell, in presenting a unified vision, value.

John Mertle - Variety, Change, and Success A multi-dimensional, results-oriented enterprise software sales leader with a proven track-record for developing strong, successful sales teams. Expert in enterprise solutions (SaaS, on-premise, cloud). Thrives by creating high-growth, high-velocity organizations. Transformational hands-on leader known for spearheading change and driving bottom-line results under very competitive market conditions, both nationally and globally. Strong success in achieving revenue growth, market penetration and strategic transformation. "We managed to rise to the occasion, but I quickly found out that most people, especially in Tech, where there's a war for talent, people don't have to work for you. They have options. In order for people to have to work with you, you need to create value for them. If you're not creating value them, they'll go elsewhere."

Rob Auld joined SOTI in March 2016. In his role as Vice President of Global Sales, Rob oversees SOTI’s commercial strategy. Prior to joining SOTI, Rob held different roles within TELUS, Purolator and Avaya, and brings 15 years of telecommunications and IT experience in mobile technology. As an expert in enterprise mobility, Rob brings a unique skillset that merges customer needs together with leading innovation, to enhance existing operations with best-in-class mobile solutions. Rob holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Ryerson University and is based in Mississauga, Ontario. "It's only really a failure if you don't take the tuition value out of that failure, and that's what I say to sales people. That's what I say to anyone who asks for career advice. If you're not trying hard enough you're probably not failing. If you are trying really hard, you're probably not going to be successful all of the time, but if you take the tuition value out these failures, that's what creates great employees and great people." - Rob Auld, VP of Worldwide Sales, SOTI

Edmund Yeung is an award-winning sales and marketing executive with more than 25 years of experience. He was one of the top ranked sales leaders with Oracle in North America. Edmund achieved an average of 300% over a 5-year span. As an accomplished sales professional, he has sold multiple multi-million-dollar deals. He has also set and broken many sales records in his career. Edmund’s clients include some of the biggest companies in the world including, Barrick Gold, Kinross Gold, RBC, Bank of Montreal, Desjardins, Intact Insurance, Virgin Mobile and Direct Energy. “We are the ambassador of the brand. In a way, you have to have somebody who is credible to be able to represent a brand - a company brand. So it goes hand-in-hand but again, you have to take the time to understand the different positioning to be able to do it properly but it all comes back to credibility, If you don't have credibility, go and sell anything - it's not going to be easy.”

To believe in what you're selling, it needs to be an industry that you‘re passionate about because being successful is more than just learning the product. It's learning the industry. Learn from the best, find the top sales person in the company from day one and understand - What are their habits? What are they doing? and learn from them. Continue to have that same mindset even beyond the first day, even beyond your first year of success. Continue to challenge yourself. Julian Teixeira is the Vice President of Sales for Lightspeed, a company that develops point of sale and eCommerce software for small and medium sized independent businesses. He started with the company in 2011 as a Sales Representative when they were a small startup of 25 employees in Montreal. Today, Lightspeed operates in over 100 countries, 9 offices, and is home to a team of 630 employees. https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianteixeira/

Special Guest, Rick Campbell, VP of Sales at StoryYap I think it's this factual if you can truly help understand what people are going through and where they are and what their job is and get a little touch of the personal life in there. You are going to be able to connect with them and help them out. I think that by putting our self interest and our commission checks as a secondary thought, putting the customer and their needs and their company needs first, I think that's going to truly propel you to be one of the better players in the game. With over two decades of strategic selling and management experience across Marketing Tech, Cyber Security, Telcoms and Business Intelligence, Rick has the haircut and stories to prove it. He is currently heading up the sales efforts at StoryTap, a new DIY marketing technology that allows brands to create, collect and share videos at scale from customer, fans and employees. He loves blending the science and art of selling and believes that being an active listener is one of the best skills an individual can nurture. And he has a policy, “No Jerks Allowed”. Social Info: linkedin.com/in/rickbcampbell Twitter – @rick_campbell

Greg Allworth has more than 25 years’ experience selling enterprise software solutions and leading regional and nationwide sales teams. He currently oversees Chrome River’s enterprise and higher education business across Canada.  Greg has spoken widely at conferences on topics relating to fraud and expense management.         He joined Chrome River from NetSuite, where he spent seven years in a number of senior sales and sales enablement roles across North America. Prior to NetSuite, Greg held sales leadership roles within Oracle. Greg lives in Brampton, Ontario with his family, and is an avid golfer. He is also an accomplished jazz drummer and has recorded two albums with Toronto-based bands.  Greg attended York University as well as the Strategic Leadership program at the Schulich School of Business.

François Lemay has 20 years experience as a sales consultant in the software industry. Started his career at IBM (7 years) then worked for other software and consulting services organization in the banking and financials services industry. ---- "Let's talk about #metoo for a second - a lot of harassment in the IT industry. I can share with you as a gay male, it was extremely difficult to fit in because they always looked at me as -the gay guy - he's no good, but I was good. People did not like to see a gay guy thriving and also over achieving their sales quota."

Harsh Sabikhi studied Electrical Engineering in school with an emphasis on computers and software. Right out of school, he worked for a fortune 80 company as a Software Engineer and then quickly realized that his calling was in Sales. He learned the basics with Texas Instruments and then transitioned into Sales in 2006. Harsh started off in hardware sales and then transitioned into software with MKS which got purchased by PTC first as a sales engineer before transitioning into a software sales. After a brief stint at a Silicon Valley startup, he decided to join pre-IPO companies first with Rally Software (which got acquired by CA). At Rally, he started Rally Canada and was their first employee. He grew the business 8x within 3 years. After the acquisition by CA, Harsh moved on to GitHub where he is currently the Country Manager for Canada.

Jennifer King would be considered a sales transformation specialist. She brings clarity and quantification to the sales organization with proven metrics and processes.  This includes People, Process, Culture and Infrastructure. She works with organizations that need to take their sales teams to the next level.  Jennifer’s biggest win was truly outstanding in dollars and impact, but the real wins are in passing this magic on and working with sales people in coaching and mentoring and reaching their goals.  An evangelist in the arena of Goal Setting and a life coach under Bob Proctor’s Life Success series, including Born Rich and Goal Setting,  Jennifer conducts seminars and public speaking not just in the high tech space but in how it applies to personal growth in all aspects of life.  An avid cycler and instructor with Goodlife Fitness, she brings this passion into the gym teaching cycling and yoga along with the goal setting that is needed in this environment.  Jennifer’s passion is the heart of sales.

Jeff Goldstein is currently the VP and general manager of Veeam Canada, a high growth software company specializing in Hyper Availability for the modern enterprise. Jeff joined Veeam in May 2016 and has grown the business by over 30% while scaling out the team across Canada. Previously Jeff was the VP and general manager for NetApp Canada. In 2001, he helped open NetApp’s Canadian subsidiary and helped scale the business from 15 people and $17m in 2001 to over $220m in revenue and 125 people. Before joining NetApp, Jeff was general manager of Data General Canada, a Division of EMC. He began as a regional manager at Data General Canada and during his tenure, he was honored with multiple Sales Manager of the Year awards, and in 1997 received the Top Subsidiary Worldwide award. Jeff has more than 35 years of experience in sales and marketing and has also held positions at AVS Technologies Ltd. and Hewlett Packard. Jeff earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering at the University of Waterloo and also holds a professional engineering designation Jeff is married with two children (Zach and Ginny) and enjoys seeing the world with his wife Sandra. Jeff is a passionate golfer and sports car enthusiast.

Tom Kane currently resides in Waterloo Ontario where he heads up a global team of sales professionals that bring solutions to the advanced manufacturing industry using lasers, in a form of augmented reality. Throughout his career, he has held various senior positions in sales, manufacturing and operations with high growth companies such as: Igloo Software, D2L, OpenText and others. Tom has also owned his own sales and distribution business to satisfy his entrepreneurial spirit. He has crossed over many industries including enterprise software, aerospace and medical devices. His years of experience implementing business systems in both SME and large organizations has given him a unique insight in realization of value for customer purchases. Tom also gives his time to coaching and mentoring both startups and new managers through Communitech in Waterloo Ontario. Tom holds an MBA from the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

Born in St. John's, Newfoundland, James Blackmore went to the University of Ottawa but didn't really know what he was doing there. He decided to go into music.  He came to Toronto for a music recording school, but then decided against it when he realized I'd never make any money. At 23 he was on his own in Toronto and had to figure out exactly how he was going to make something of myself. He was ambitious, outgoing and willing to work hard so sales was a natural fit, although he didn't realize it at the time. From Quiznos for $8 an hour, 32 hours a week to Moneymart for an extra $1 an hour and a 40 hour week to landing at WBR, (Worldwide Business Research) making 100+ cold calls a day to sell attendees on business conferences. From there he landed a job as a very junior sales rep at a small software company on Bay St. that made practice management software for lawyers. He was there for 3 years and was promoted twice Then a big jump to NetSuite which was his introduction to truly professional software sales. Longer cycles, 5-6 figure deals, managing multiple resources on a deal, working with C levels at small companies . . . a great experience. Today James works for Plex and lead Plex's efforts at selling into Canada. It's challenging and also very rewarding for him. Manufacturing is a big part of Ontario's economy and it's an honor for James to work with local manufacturers to help improve their operational effectivity. 

He started selling at 17 years old and in his first week he made $ 500, and the second week $ 1500. This was 39 years ago. Since then he’s gone on over 8000 appointments. Ira has studied everything related to sales. Study, go out there and try. he learned what worked and want didn’t. He’s a certified professional coach through iPec coaching, and specializing is sales coaching. He’s a NLP practitioner and a consultant/trainer in LAB Profiling (Language and behaviour profiling which is based on NLP). Ira believes that anybody can be great in sales if they have the aptitude and the desire.